Suspicious (On the Run) (7 page)

“And Harrington? Where’s he?”

“No one knows.” Her eyes widened. “Not like him at all. He’s never rude. He always returns calls and never misses a meeting. People are whispering…” She lowered her voice then suddenly seemed to remember something and flushed. “Never mind. Sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything. We’re not supposed to talk to anyone. About any of it,” she added miserably. “I just forgot. You were at the exhibit and all…” she trailed off.

The sales girl held up one of the shirts with an Italian flag on it.

“Um…” Amy pushed her flyaway hair out of her eyes. “No. Do you have one with the Colosseum on it? Yes? Oh, good. Yes. I’ll take it. Small. Little.” Amy held her hands a few inches apart.

The three of them did a little dance, moving around so that the sales girl and Amy could get to the back of the store where Amy paid.

“Well, goodbye,” Amy said as she passed Zoe on her way out.

“Have a good flight.” Zoe browsed the T-shirts then decided she needed to move along. As she turned to leave, she saw Amy had left several papers and an airline ticket on the counter by the cash register.

Zoe snatched them and sprinted to the sidewalk. Amy was already almost to the piazza where a rank of taxis waited. Zoe jogged up the street and caught her just as she glided into one of the taxis while the driver held the door.

An expression of alarm chased across Amy’s face as she turned to Zoe, her eyes sharp and wary, but then almost instantly the expression was gone, replaced by a limpid half-questioning gaze. “You forgot this.” Zoe held out the papers and the ticket.

“Oh, thank you. I would have—I don’t know what I would have done—”

Zoe cut off her stammering thanks. “You’re welcome. Better get going.” She stepped back and the driver slammed the door then moved to his own seat. The taxi tore down the street and Zoe followed slowly.

Jack met her coming up the street. “You look contemplative.”

She recounted her meeting with Amy as they walked toward the Spanish Steps. “She looked so scared. I guess that’s what is bothering me. She looked like she wanted to get away as fast as she could. I wonder…do you think she knows something and isn’t letting on? I don’t usually scare people.”

“She might know something. It’s possible. On the other hand, you can be quite intimidating, especially before you’ve had your coffee.”

Zoe jabbed him playfully on the arm. “This is serious. Well, no way to know now. She’s gone. Did you find out anything?”

“The maids said there’s nothing in Harrington’s room.”

“So he’s gone. Just like Carlo.”

“What? Your admirer has left town?”

“He’s not my admirer.”

“He was taken with you. I practically had to use a wedge to join your conversation.”

“Don’t blame me. You were the one who sent me on that errand. He’s one of those men who has to ‘conquer’ every woman in his sphere, at least in his own mind. Tiresome, really.”

“Can’t say I’m sorry that he left town, though. Where did he go?” Jack asked as they reached the steps and began the descent.

“She didn’t say. Speaking of charming women, I saw you working your brightest smile on the maids. You must have found out something else.”

“The police have Harrington’s room blocked off, but the maid saw it this morning before they arrived. It’s in the same state as it has been for the last several days. Empty.”

“Empty, as in he wasn’t staying there?”

Jack nodded. “She said the bed hadn’t been slept in—for days—and there was no trash. No clothes in the closet, no suitcase, no toiletries.”

“Then he had to be staying somewhere else. He did say he visited here often. Maybe he’s staying with a friend.”

They both stopped. “The pink building—,” Zoe said.

Jack finished her thought. “The one by the Pantheon.”

The taxi dropped them at the Pantheon. They went to the little café where they had talked with Harrington then retraced their steps through the streets. “Both times he asked us to meet him, it was near here. It makes sense that he stayed somewhere around here. Otherwise, why not ask us to meet him near the Spanish Steps?”

“He could just be extremely cautious. He wanted to meet with us away from the hotel where the insurance employees were staying. That fits with his personality.”

“But when we made plans with him last night, it wouldn’t have mattered if we were seen with him today. The opening is over, and there is no secret to keep about our being in touch with him now. We could have met near the Hotel Santa Maria. This is a long way to go in the heat,” Zoe said, glad an enormous cloud had drifted in front of the sun, which dropped the temperature a couple of degrees.

They made a few false turns before they found the pink building. A woman was entering through a small cutout inside the larger double green doors, and they hurried forward to catch the miniature door before it closed completely.

“Jack, wait.” Zoe stopped to look at the list of names beside the buzzers on the wall by the front door. “Look at Number Ten.”

Jack stepped back, but held the door open with one hand. Beside the buzzer for apartment ten was the name,
Morton
. It had been scribbled on a piece of paper and taped over the last occupant’s name. Every other name was obviously Italian. “Short for Throckmorton, possibly?” Zoe asked.

“Could be a coincidence,” Jack said. “An English friend who happens to live in Rome.”

Number Ten was on the top floor. The stairwell was quiet. The woman who’d entered before them had gone into a ground-floor apartment. Windows on each landing were open, but as they ascended, the heat intensified. They reached the top landing, and Zoe went to Number Ten, the only apartment on that floor and knocked.

Silence.

They exchanged a look. Jack banged on the door. “Harrington? It’s Jack and Zoe. We need to talk to you.”

After a minute more of silence, Jack tried the doorknob, but it didn’t give. “We have to make sure…” He lifted the mat in front of the door then dropped it back into place. “No key here.”

Zoe glanced around the bare landing. “There’s nowhere to hide a key out here.”

Jack ran his hands lightly along the top of the doorframe. “He could be in there, hurt or sick. It’s the only explanation I can think of for his no show. You know he’s not the type to forget appointments or ignore phone calls.” Jack moved to one of the windows on the landing and repeated the process of checking around the frame, then bent to look under the sill.

Zoe sighed. “You’re right. I can’t see him forgetting us, or blowing us off either.” She went to the window on the opposite side of the landing. It overlooked a cobblestoned courtyard filled with hatchbacks and Smart cars. Multi-story buildings with shutters thrown back and laundry fluttering in the breeze ringed the courtyard. She dutifully patted the frame, but didn’t find anything, then leaned out the open window and looked to the right, toward the windows of apartment Number Ten. Zoe switched her messenger bag around so that it was positioned against her back, and after a quick glance around the courtyard to make sure no one was watching her, she threw a leg over the windowsill. “I’ve found it.”

“The key?”

“No. Our way in.” Zoe put her foot on the narrow decorative stucco ledge that ran along the building under the window, then pivoted on the ball of her foot as she pulled her other leg over the sill. Jack turned. “Zoe just because you rock climb in a gym in Dallas…”

Gripping the window frame and the shutter, she inched along. She reached around a drainpipe and grabbed the shutter of the next window with her left hand. She leaned into it slightly. It held firm. “Hush, Jack. You’ll have everyone looking out their windows.”

“I don’t care. This is crazy. Do you know how far up you are?”

“No. You know why?” Zoe asked in a soft, abstracted voice as she edged her foot along the ledge then smoothly transferred it around the drainpipe. “Because when you’re climbing, you focus on what’s around you. Your next handhold, the next foothold.” She shifted her right hand to the shutter and eased her body to the left, closer to the window, which was made of two narrow panes that ran the length of the opening vertically. They closed in the middle, but the latch wasn’t fastened.

Zoe pushed gently on the windowpane closest to her left hand. It swung inward. She inched closer and peered inside. The apartment was small enough that in one quick glance she could see there was no one home. She carefully transferred her grip from the shutter to the window frame and lightly hopped into the room, which was a mixture of the traditional lines of the building with moldings and ornate light figures combined with the contemporary accents. She recognized the flower prints hanging on the wall from her IKEA browsing.

She stepped down over a pale blue couch, which was paired with a floral print chair and positioned in front of a glass coffee table. Across the room, a desk was positioned beside the window that looked out on the street.

The back half of the apartment was divided between a kitchenette and a bedroom. All Zoe had to do was lean slightly to the side to see the bedroom was also uninhabited. The bed, its white duvet cover smooth and unwrinkled, took up most of the space, but a small round table had been wedged along one side of it and served as a nightstand with a clock and lamp. A freestanding double-door closet in white pressboard, one of those do-it-yourself assembly jobs that came in a flat-pack box, took up the rest of the room. The door to the bathroom stood open, showing tiny octagon tiles covering the floor, a pedestal sink, and a modern shower insert. Laminated pieces of paper were positioned around the apartment with instructions in several languages. There was one by the coffee machine and another by a radiator.

She went to the front door, checked to make sure there wasn’t an alarm, then swung it open, noticing that there was another laminated card by the door with instructions on how to find the building’s laundry room.

Jack stood on the threshold, breathing hard. “Zoe, that was a crazy, dangerous stunt.”

“I was perfectly safe. Just because you don’t like climbing—”

“It has nothing to do with what I like or don’t like. I wasn’t the one out there.”

“Precisely. I knew you wouldn’t want to do it, so I did.”

“No, you knew I wouldn’t
let
you do it.”

Zoe leveled a look at him. “I don’t think we want to go there right now, do we? Are you coming in or not? No matter how hard you searched, we weren’t going to find a key out there, and short of you picking the lock—and this one looks sturdy—that was our only way in. You wanted in. We’re in.”

Jack said something as he stepped inside that Zoe pretended not to hear. He shut the door with his elbow and quickly looked in the bedroom and bath.

“There’s no one here. I checked.” Zoe went directly to the desk. “This apartment must be a temporary rental. There are instructions all around the place. Here’s one by the phone, and the first number listed is for Rome Holiday Vacation Rentals.”

Jack paused to read the laminated note by the radiator. “Looks like it.”

“It does look like Harrington is staying here.” She pointed to a stack of business cards with his name. “And look, paperwork from Millbank and Proust.” Zoe indicated several sheets of what looked like inventory lists printed on forms with the company name at the top and Harrington’s signature at the bottom.

“Don’t touch anything.” Jack handed her a kitchen towel. “First order of business. Let’s get rid of your fingerprints.” He went to the door and wiped down the doorknob and the frame.

Zoe’s thoughts skipped from Alessi’s questions about the plaque to the news that Harrington’s room hadn’t been used at the hotel—that odd fact would stand out to Alessi, and he had more resources than they did. It wouldn’t be long before Alessi connected this room with Harrington, especially if Harrington had paid for it with a credit card.

Zoe wiped down the window glass and the frame, not an easy feat, considering she had to use her shoulder to hold the window steady. When she was sure it was clean, she turned her attention back to the room. Jack was occupied at the desk, using a pencil to move around papers. He tapped a stack of folders he’d fanned out across the desk with the pencil eraser. “Look at this.”

She angled her head so she could see the names on the tabs. One seemed to leap out at her. “London Premiere,” she read aloud. “As in, the jewel heist at the London movie premiere?”

“I think so,” Jack said with a grim note in his voice. “You take these.” Zoe managed to maneuver the folders into the dishtowel without touching them with her bare hands and went to sit on the couch. Using the towel as a glove, she clumsily went through the folders. The first was labeled, “Rowen Meadows,” and contained several pages of official Millbank and Proust paperwork with specifics on a policy that covered several unique pieces of jewelry. Detailed descriptions as well as photographs were included of an exquisite peacock brooch. The main stone, the body of the peacock, was a heavy opal, a swirl of iridescent blue and green. Sapphires, emeralds, and diamonds studded the delicate gold tail and more diamonds and sapphires were positioned in the shape of the bird’s neck and head. A history sheet described the origin of the stones, the jeweler who created the piece, and previous owners. The brooch was the most unusual piece, but it wasn’t the most valuable. A ruby and diamond bracelet as well as a pink-hued diamond ring were given the same comprehensive treatment.

In comparison to the glossy photos, the rest of the file should have been boring, just hand-printed pages of notes about Rowen Meadows, the country home where the owner kept the jewels. Zoe found herself scanning each page, though, her heartbeat inching up as she read about security systems and codes, routines of household staff, and, lastly, maps of each floor of the house. Unlike the first pages of the file, which had been official documents from Millbank and Proust, the pages at the end were hand-written in what looked to be Harrington’s distinctive, precise printing.

“The files you’ve got, are they about robberies?” Zoe asked, breaking the silence.

“One is. There was a robbery at Gilbrand House. Official documents and photographs of a medieval cross and several modern pieces with amethysts and garnets. At the back of the file, there are notes and maps about security in Gilbrand House.”

“Hand-printed and meticulous?” Zoe asked.

“Yes.” Jack scrubbed a hand over his face and muttered, “I didn’t believe it—that he could be involved, but these files…”

“I know,” Zoe said, swallowing at the devastated look on his face. “I’m sorry, Jack.”

He raised his head, a bleak look on his face. “These are blueprints for robberies, with most of the incredibly sensitive information in Harrington’s handwriting, or at least it looks like his handwriting to me.”

“Me, too,” Zoe said miserably. “It’s such exact printing, and the slashes through the letter ‘
t
’ with an upswing going from low on the left to high on the right, well, it looks like the ‘
t
’ in his signature. And the loop on the ‘
g
’, isn’t closed either, just like his note.”

She flipped to the last file, the “London Premiere.” It was slightly different. It had sketchier details on the jewels themselves, but the information on where the jewels would be stored and how they would be transported to the movie premiere was thick and copious. It was the only file with printouts of news articles that described how the jeweler’s courier had been robbed inside his hotel room before he could transfer the jewels to the movie stars before they walked down the red carpet.

Zoe rubbed her forehead, hardly able to believe it. Harrington, the thief? It was so unlikely. But then again, Melissa Davray and Carlo Goccetto seemed utterly unlikely as well. It was hard to believe any of them were involved, but as Harrington had said, all it would take would be a partner.

“Zoe, there’s more—a file about people,” Jack said.

She went to look over his shoulder. “They’re bios. Looks like they’re from Millbank and Proust’s website.”

He used the pencil’s eraser to flip through the pages with headshots of Melissa Davray, Amy Beck, Carlo Goccetto, as well as two other men she didn’t recognize. A short paragraph describing the person’s background and their position at Millbank and Proust accompanied each photo. “Wait, slow down,” Zoe said, noticing a few of the pages had the same squared off handwriting at the bottom.

“Dates and locations.”

Zoe tapped her lip. “That one, February twenty-fifth. I just read something…” She turned and went back to the folders she’d been looking through. “Yes, that was the date of the robbery at Rowen House.”

Jack flipped back and forth between the pages. “They all have the same list of dates, the dates of the robberies.”

“He was…checking for alibis?” Zoe said. “He did it.” She blew out a breath then put into words what they were both thinking. “He’s the thief. The details, the planning, the notes. Why would he care about alibis?”

He went completely still. “What is it?” He was staring at the last paper in the folder.

It was a screen shot of Safe Haven’s website home page. A printout of a newspaper article about the recovery of the lost art was stapled to the side along with a grainy photo of Jack, another screen shot, cropped to show only his face. Harrington must have pulled it off the web, from one of the articles about the fraud case.

“He wasn’t checking alibis,” Jack said. “He was looking for someone to pin the thefts on. He picked me.”

“But you weren’t even in Europe when those other robberies took place.”

“No, but if Harrington managed to tie me to at least one, the Flawless Set, then the supposition would be that I was involved in the others, once the thefts were linked through Millbank and Proust. If you’re going to go to the trouble of framing someone, it might as well be for all the thefts, right? Not just one. They might not have proof, but with my history…”